FIG. 1 is a high level block diagram of an exemplary computer environment 100 in which online shopping, also known as e-commerce, can take place. Referring to FIG. 1, the computer environment 100 is shown as including a client computer device 112, upon which is installed a web browser 114, and a plurality of online shops 122a, 122b and 122c with which client computer device 102 can communicate via the Internet 102 to perform online shopping. The client computer device 102 can be, e.g., a desktop computer or a mobile computer, such as, but not limited to, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a smartphone, a smartwatch, a person data assistant (PDA), or the like. The client computer device 102 can alternatively be a gaming console computer, or a smart television, or any other computer device that enables a user to access the Internet. The online shops 122a, 122b and 122c can be, e.g., Amazon.com™, eBay™ and Walmart.com™, wherein the parenthetical “(TM)” refers to a Trademark. The online shops 122a, 122b and 122c can be collectively referenced as online shops 122, or individual referenced as an online shop 122. Each online shop 122 can include one or more ordering server, which can be a vendor server running the online shop. The web browser 114 can be, e.g., Firefox™, Internet Explorer™, Google Chrome™, Opera™, Safari™, or Bing™, just to name a few.
The client computer device 112 can be more succinctly referred to as a client device 112, or alternatively as a user computer device 122 or a user device 122. The online shops 122 may also be referred to by other analogous names, such as, but not limited to, e-web-stores, e-shops, e-stores, Internet shops, web-shops, web-stores, online stores, or online retailers. While only three exemplary online shops 122 are represented in FIG. 1, there are actually millions of online shops 122 with which a client device (e.g., 112) can communicate and order products. The client device 112, and the ordering servers (that run an online shop 122), each include a least one processor and a memory storing one or more programs for execution by the at least one processor.
A user of the client device 112 can utilize the web browser 114 to browse and order products that are offered for sale by one or more of the online shops 122. Each such product can be a physical good or a service, wherein a service may be intangible. Exemplary physical goods that can be purchased from online shops 122 include clothes, shoes, books, music, sporting goods and plane tickets, just to name a few. Exemplary services that can be purchased from online shops 122 include streaming music services, streaming video services, and more conventional services, such as cleaning services and repair services, just to name a few.
While online shopping (also known as e-commerce) has been in existence for more than 20 years, and has made purchasing products more convenient than in the days prior to online shopping, there are still many aspects of online shopping that are complicated, inconvenient and time consuming for users. For example, after a user has utilized a web browser to identify a product that they want to order from an online shop, the user typically needs to enter and verify their email address, delivery address, billing address, payment information (e.g., credit or debit card information), a password, and/or other personal information before they can finally order the product. Where a user wants to order various different products from various different online shops, the user must repeat this process for each of the different online shops, which typically each have their own unique graphical user interface (GUI) that requires the user to enter similar personal information in various different ways in response to various different prompts, because there is no global standard that online shops follow to obtain such personal information. Further, this procedure typically requires a user to create and remember a password for each separate online shop. This procedure is not only time consuming and annoying to the user, but it is also error prone. Further, users often get frustrated before they complete the process of entering and/or verifying their personal information, and don't complete the ordering process. This is bad for the user, because the user fails to order the product that the user spent time finding and wants to purchase. This is also bad for the online shops, because they lose sales.